


dig up her bones (but leave the soul alone)

by rowdyhomo



Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Depression, For Want of a Nail, Gen, some mild disassociative things
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-17
Updated: 2018-03-29
Packaged: 2019-03-05 23:12:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,168
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13398288
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rowdyhomo/pseuds/rowdyhomo
Summary: if being a medic nin has taught rin anything, it's how to pick herself up and put herself back together. again, and again, and again.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> hey i love rin n i think its bs that she died but thats me w a lot of naruto characters. still. idk how long this is going to be, but i do have a goal post set for the 'ending' so we'll see how this goes. i'll add more tags as i go bc otherwise they don't apply n nothing annoys me more when i click on fics that don't have the tagged content yet so, i'll spare you the peeve.

Rin spends a week alternating between ghosting through existence and painful awareness that she is irrefutably alive. A week where her emotions could be running anywhere from mind numbing guilt to body shaking rage at the drop of hat. A week where from one moment to the next, she does exactly one of two things.

One is drifting, there but not, in her home at exactly three specific points. The floor of her room, futon not required, where they shared hopes and dreams. The two of them giving each other little bits and parts of themselves like candy. The kitchen table, where they ate and laughed together. She can count the number of times she convinced him to eat the vegetables her father cooked and served on that table on one hand. The bathroom, self-explanatory, she’s human, though often she lingers longer than she should, unready to face the rest of the house.

The other is ruthlessly beating the tar out of herself in solo taijutsu practice in any training field but one filled to the brim with a ghost too bright. She breaks her fists even as she heals them wondering if she had been just a little faster, just a little stronger, just a little, well, _more_ …if anything would have changed. Medics are not supposed to engage in combat. Nobody had expected her to fight, but she _should_ have because then _maybe_ —

(Whenever her thoughts start wandering anywhere near here, Rin hits the training post again. Harder. Splits skin and jars bones. She pushes herself through another set of katas. Again. Again. Her muscles shake and ache until there’s no room for thought.

What-ifs are as useful to her as fairy tales. She refuses to let them bog her down.)

She spends a week of trying to understand why the girl looking back at her felt like a stranger she’d meet in the street. Of examining herself, shying away each time, but struggling closer on each attempt all the same, trying to find how she can fit back together. A week of finding herself empty. Scraped out and hollowed because he had been _so much_ of her, her closest and best friend, but now he’s gone and so are the parts they shared. Of feeling too full, fit to burst. Too much sadness, too much agony, too much anger, bubbling, rising, and spilling out from her tiny body like water in a pot that boils and boils over until there’s nothing left.

A single week of leave is all the village allows her for mourning the death of one Uchiha Obito. Her best friend and the brightest _anything_ in Rin’s life. There’s a war, after all. Everyone had to pick themselves up, dust themselves off, and do their part.

Rin understands this. She does.

Rin counts herself lucky she’s given any time at all—even if it feels like no time at all. Plenty of people get pushed back onto the rosters the day _of_ losing someone. Skilled and a medic at that, Rin knows she should have been put right back out there on the home front, at least.

She reminds herself to send Minato a thank-you basket of sorts.

Still, it’s not _enough_.

There’s a yawning pit inside her, a buzzing in her skin, and a tackiness to her fingers that _will not leave_. None of these are gone or going. She’s not even approaching something she would call verifiably ‘okay’ in anyone else.

She washes her scrubs on Wednesday, anyway. It soothes the creature of habit within her, if nothing else.

Thursday, her final day of leave, has Rin parked at the kitchen table hands cupped around a mug. At some point in the morning, she had decided to boil water for tea. She only gets through a cup before the teakettle cools. She can’t find the energy to get up to reheat it. Forgets, really. The mug remains empty after that.

Rin sits there until the sky turns dark. Doing nothing, thinking nothing—trying not to think. She sits there some more. Definitely not thinking about a life moving on without another. She stretches a little to ease the cramps in her back. Certainly not thinking about how every day is step further away from something precious but irredeemably lost. The mug is no longer in her hands, she doesn’t remember but she must have gotten up to place it in the sink. Absolutely _not_ thinking that it’s her fault.

Definitely. Certainly. Absolutely.

Except—

The sensible part of her brain nudges that thought off track and reminds her she has work tomorrow.

Rin closes her eyes before finally peeling herself off the chair.

Breathes out.

She empties the teakettle and puts it in the sink where the mug…is not. It takes only a moment to search, buzzing with low level confusion, and find it shattered on the floor. There’s a new scratch decorating the cabinets from where it must have struck. Well.

Rin bites her lip. Hard. Dredges up the energy to care. Then, broom and dust bin in hand, she sweeps. The shards drop into the trash.

Rin thinks it must be a special kind of pathetic to relate to a broken cup, of all things.

At least she hadn’t cried, she muses, dragging herself upstairs to shower. Small mercies, silver linings, and all that.

Showering takes more strength than it should until Rin manages to rattle the switch in her head—the one that demands her thoughts run and run and run—off. Automatic habit takes over after that, routine thoughts about professionalism pushing her through the motions. At some point, the water turns cold and Rin realizes she can’t quite remember if she shampooed or conditioned. She does both again a bit more vigorously than necessary before twisting off the pipes, shivering and cold. Goosebumps prickle along her skin as Rin slips into her pajamas.

Rin lays in her bed, wet hair fanning across her pillow. Her throat is tight with an emotion she can’t name. Doesn’t want to even _try_ to name.

(If she gives it a name, she gives it a home and she refuses to let this swallow her.)

Tomorrow she must come back to life. Tomorrow she must go on. Tomorrow she must _move._

 _Tomorrow, I’m done_ , she lies. Insists as she curls up in her futon, her stomach twisting, eyes burning. _One more good cry and then I’m done_.

Rin tells herself this over and over. Hoping that if she says it enough, it will become true. Even if the truth is she will never stop mourning because Obito will never stop being missing—her mind stutters and scurries around the word 'dead’ despite her herculean efforts—but she has a twelve-hour shift at the hospital tomorrow. A glance at the clock. Today. She can’t afford to be anything but put together. Her _patients_ can’t afford her to be anything but put together. One moment of weakness could mean a mistake with deadly consequences. Falling apart is not for those literally holding lives in their hands.

She must be okay. She _will be_ okay.

And if she’s not really, actually, okay that’s what her two fifteen-minute breaks are for. Eating and crying.

Rin closes her not-dry-but-getting-there eyes. She breathes in, gathering every little thought and emotion erupting from her. Compresses, compresses, and compresses, it all together until it’s a small, small thing. She then mentally chucks that little ball of oh-god as far as she’s able into the furthest reaches of her mind.

Breathes out.

Undoubtedly, it will come back to bite her in unsavory places. For now, it’s enough to fall asleep before the blinking numbers on her alarm clock read past four in the morning.


	2. Chapter 2

Returning to work is easier than Rin expects. Habits and routines enshroud her, like friends welcoming back an absentee. As if walking a well-worn, familiar path, her body takes her through the motions. Her mind focuses down, down, down, until her attention is a needlepoint. Sharp and singular but easily directed from one task to the next. There’s no room for grief or guilt when she’s balancing lives in the space between her mind and her fingers.

Until her early afternoon and evening breaks arrive, that is.

Then Rin hides herself away in stairwells, utility closets, and out of the way or out of use rooms and hallways. Not unlike drama actors wiping their face from happiness to sadness, though her agony is anything but a show, Rin drops her mask of bedside friendliness and lets the tears comes.

It’s efficient, her crying. Done quietly, with no scraping raw sobs, just the soft rapid tip-tap of her tears dropping. Hidden under the clack of chopsticks and hitched, shaky breathing. She sips water between the shudders of her shoulders, aftershocks of her silent weeping, to keep herself hydrated. When she finishes her food, she tidies up. Wipes her tears, dries her face, pats her cheeks, and pulls on her most confident, comforting expression. She’s has no time for crying. There’s people to help. To save.

Even if she couldn’t save the singular one that _really mattered_ —

Inhale. Focus, focus. Smile brighter, softer, there. Perfect. Back to work.

Repeat when her evening break arrives. Repeat again after she strolls confidently home at the end of her shift and shatters upon closing her bedroom door. Only to smile once more when the hospital doors open.

They say to fake it until you make it. Rin hopes she makes it sooner rather than later.

Three weeks later, and Rin still tastes tinges of salt in her rice.

At least it’s only once a day instead of twice. Or three times. She hardly cries at home any more.

Progress, right?

She’s going to bed more regularly, too, with the strain of her hospital shifts forcing her exhausted body to kick itself unconscious. Eating occurs more often as well, a by-product of habit and necessity rather than choice, but…it’s progress.

It’s progress.

Rin sighs as she glances at her clock.

6:24 am.

Hm.

Granola will do for breakfast, then, she supposes, heaving herself out of her futon. Though she’d rather do anything else, Rin folds the futon up and pushes it into its corner. A quick glance around the room shows her clothes from yesterday and her towel strew about the floor. It feels impossible, but she gathers them up into the laundry hamper anyway. Straightens up her closet just a bit, then dresses.

Another look around her tidy room, and Rin inhales like the neatness of it might sink into her and set something right in her, too.

She thinks it might.

Going downstairs to the kitchen, Rin stuffs two granola bars into her mouth as fast as humanly possible and chugs two cups of scalding tea much the same. She snags the leftovers her mother left her and rushes off to the hospital. Another day, moving and moving _on_. Yet, Rin feels less like she’s ripping herself in half to leave a part of her behind and more like she’s excising necrotizing tissue so that the gaping wound in her may heal.

Obito would yell at her for wallowing so long, anyway.

The thought brings a smile, genuine and true in a way it hasn’t been in weeks, to Rin’s face. Somehow, thinking of her friend doesn’t stab her through and leave her hollow like it might’ve several weeks before. It aches, deeply, and it always will but it’s duller and will only grow more distant.

It’s good. It feels good.

Rin breathes out and smiles and—

Stops.

Kakashi stands outside of the hospital, loitering like he belongs nowhere else but this spot. He slouches against the alley wall between the hospital and Rin’s least favorite tea shop which is, unfortunately, the only one to keep odd hours nearby. Inconspicuously conspicuous in the way his single eye darts towards the hospital door then down to the engaging alley floor.

Rin blinks and realizes she hasn’t seen Kakashi in weeks, nearly as long as Obito has been gone. She blinks again as she recognizes the expression on Kakashi's face.. It’s the look of a shinobi who knows they really, probably, _should_ get medical help but equally, really, really, _really_ do not want to step anywhere near the hospital.

Rin tries not sigh. Fails. Then winces because _she hasn’t seen Kakashi in weeks_. Sure, there’s a war going on and there’s something to say about two-way streets, but they’re _teammates_.

The corner of her lips twist down, her eyes flicking between Kakashi and the hospital. Then with a not quite groan, Rin marches over to Kakashi. As she comes closer she sees the way Kakashi’s holding himself. A delicate practice of balancing and holding in a way that his pose seems natural to mask his injury. She’s across the street and only three feet away when Kakashi abruptly looks up at her.

Rin watches his eye go wide and his body tense. He’s going to run. Before any logical thought forms, Rin shrieks, “HATAKE KAKASHI! IF YOU BODY FLICKER AWAY FROM ME I WILL TRUSS YOU UP LIKE A PIG SO HELP ME GODS!”

An awkward pause follows her declaration, various people stopping to raise eyebrows at Rin’s display. Mortification burns in her. She hadn’t meant to shout that loudly. Across from her, Kakashi stands frozen. Cheeks flaming, Rin closes the distance between her and Kakashi. She grabs his arm, tightly, and gently frog marches him into the hospital, past the front desk, and into a room.

The brunette forcibly sits Kakashi down on the bed then jabs a finger at him. “Stay.”

Kakashi looks up at her, bemused laziness in his gaze. It feels so carefully practiced, like a skin he hasn’t settled into yet, that it’s almost painful for Rin to look at. This is a Kakashi she doesn’t know. Hiding under a cracked veneer assembled into a shelled mimicry of a person who Rin knew beyond measure. It makes Rin’s stomach lurch. It makes her breathe easier. Mostly, it weighs her down with something uncomfortably close to rage but too mixed up guilt to have any fury. Here sat aloof, untouchable Kakashi, making a living effigy of himself in slumped posture and forced ease all for a boy he couldn’t give a damn about when he was alive.

All for the boy Rin couldn’t save.

Rin keeps her gaze on Kakashi’s singular eye. She doesn’t look at the slanted hitai-ate.

“Hello to you too,” he says. His voice lacking any authoritative ice, dismissive fury, or superiority. “You didn’t need to yell. I wasn’t going anywhere.”

It’s, frankly, the kindest Kakashi has ever spoken to her.

Having expected bristling, snarling, as he always did when injured and getting nothing but friendly compliance leaves Rin feeling as if the world rolled off its axis. She…doesn’t know what to do. This is a Kakashi she recognizes. His scattered pitfalls of grief, loss, and ghosts easily detected underneath the cracks of his false veneer. She's able to list his favorite foods, his least favorite, his favorite book, the way he sleeps, eats, and fights. The way you simply pick up on such things while in cohabitation with others. This is also a Kakashi she doesn’t know. Someone taking traits of two different people and smashing them together, pulling the strings, and hoping that just maybe the charade would pull off. He speaks and moves like a stranger.

Rin wonders if she looks the same.

Fake it ‘til you make it, right?

Pushing down the twisting in her gut, Rin calls up her brief lack of composure and allows the embarrassment to rush through her full force. Rin flaps her hands about, spluttering, “I didn’t mean to! It just…slipped out. It’s your fault anyway for being so belligerent about your healthcare like...”

Rin pauses, choking on the name that just moments before felt breathable but suddenly settles firmly between her ribs like daggers. Kakashi isn’t looking at her.

“…You absolutely were gonna run away. Trust me, I’m a medic, I know this,” she finishes lamely. “You looked like half a dozen other hair munchers I’ve had to wrangle into treatment.”

Kakashi squints at her long enough for Rin to be uncomfortable. He used to do that a lot, before, when she would needle him for affection, recognition, anything. Anything at all.

Her and Obito really are— _were_ —too similar, she thinks. Then she defiantly plants her hands on her hips.

“What?”

“…Hair munchers?” questions Kakashi.

Rin sputters, trying to find an explanation. Finally, she about faces and throws up her hands.

“I’m not supposed to cuss at work! Now, stay there. I’m gonna get your paperwork started,” Rin says. She pauses in the doorway, turning to point at her own eyes in an exaggerated gesture then jab them at Kakashi. “I do mean _stay_. If I find you gone you’re gonna figure out why medic nins are scary. Got it?”

“I can also roll over and sit, y’know, I’m not an old dog,” replies Kakashi in exaggerated sarcasm.

Rin opens her mouth only for no sound to come out.

Kakashi’s looking at her in a way that seems like he’s not really looking at all. Rin just happens to be in his line of sight. His one visible eye is half lidded as always but there’s a subtle line of tension in his shoulders.

“Humph,” she says. For a lack of anything better, she upturns her nose and adds, “We’ll see.”

The tension disappears. Something that might be a smile, disused and flagging like an atrophied muscle, changes the line of his mouth. It’s hard to tell with the mask. Rin’s nonetheless relieved, for all the good it does her, as her mind reels over this strange change in behavior. Kakashi’s always been obstinate, sometimes sarcastic. But, never did he make a joke just to make a joke. Instead, always choosing to lace them with poison insults and dripping acid.

Rin gives herself an internal shake and moves to exit the room.

“I do mean it, though! Stay here,” Rin insists over her shoulder.

Behind her, Kakashi sighs, “I’ll be here.”

Rin closes the door and succeeds in not collapsing back against it. But only just. Drained beyond all measure—from a silly conversation with a…friend? Teammate? —it’s all Rin can do to stand.

Seeing Kakashi…Rin doesn’t think its bad. He’s her dear teammate for all that they haven’t spoken in a near month. She’s not sure if it’s good, either, though. In that month, Rin thought of him once, maybe twice. She's certain she must have. Even if she can’t recall the specifics. There had to have been a flash of thought. Somewhere besides the few times, during the first days when she would cry, harsh and achingly bitter, in the dark of night when nothing could be good, her heart bleeding off her sleeves as she wished, horribly, but wished true that instead of Obito—

_And that’s enough of that._

Rin presses the heels of her palms against her cheeks rubbing furiously, pushing away tears that aren’t present but are desperately trying to burst forth.

Kakashi likely hadn’t thought of her either. She shouldn’t feel bad. Even despite his apparent change of demeanor. After all, his promise only counted when Rin is in danger. It isn’t like they were close before. She hadn’t even been the not-close-but-close that Obito bore with dubious honor.

Still, Rin’s heart hangs heavy like overripe fruit in her chest.

_Things can change, though, can’t they?_

The girl inhales before exhaling harshly through her nose. She bets Kakashi knows she’s just been standing out her like an idiot and the thought of embarrassing herself more pushes her into motion. Rin strides quickly back towards the front desk. She pulls her professional pleasantry mask in place. It takes the rest of the walk to tug a little harder on that little something in her that just started to feel right to smooth out any creases.

When she smiles, the receptionist Yayaka smiles back without out any hint worry around her eyes. The two of them chat briefly about the new stray cat Yayaka picked up then Rin lays out the details of her patient for the woman to mark off. Rin gathers the proper forms as she does, clipping them to a clipboard. It’s a little against order to have the patient in a room before check-in but Rin’s liked here. Liked even more by Yayaka who treats her like a sister, and the receptionist lets it go with a conspiratorial wink.

Rin thanks her profusely, already scribbling out the details she remembers, before turning to return to Kakashi’s room. Upon arriving, she knocks on the door then slides it open, smiling sunnily in full preparation of being disappointed. Surprise blooms in her when she finds Kakashi exactly as she’d left him. He’d listened to her. She tilts her head to the side.

“Is this a genjutsu?” she asks.

Curious, teasing, testing the waters. This is her only teammate, she won’t let him go without a fight, not after what they’d been through.

Kakashi, now sprawling bonelessly on the bed, a pose Rin is incapable of fitting into her idea of Kakashi, waves a hand her.

“Too much work. Would be funny though.”

“Alright. Well. I already got all of your basic info down, but I’m going to run over it with you afterwards anyway, okay?” Rin hums as she makes her way over, depositing the clipboard on the sink counter. She washes her hands quickly then turns to Kakashi. “What’s the injury?”

Kakashi fails to answer, staring at her strangely instead. Rin gives a glare. If he’s going to be obstinate about this, Rin really _is_ going to show him what makes medic nin terrifying.

“Kakashi—”

“Are you—”

They both stop and start at the same time. Exasperation from Rin swallowed up by the delicateness of Kakashi’s tone. They wait for the other to go on until Rin raises one commanding eyebrow just as Kushina taught her.

Kakashi sighs then pulls up his shirt.

“It’s not new. A couple of the stitches popped is all,” explains Kakashi.

Rin frowns as she leans in, gently removing the bandaging over the wound. It’s about three inches long, likely from a kunai, just above Kakashi’s hipbone on his left side. The skin puckers together by textbook field stitching except for the end where it gapes and leaks blood.

Immediately, light like green flickering firelight lights up her hands, Rin presses her hands to the wound. Her chakra threads its way into skin, vessels, and Kakashi’s own chakra system.

“Why do you even have stitches?” asks Rin as her chakra threads deeper. Her voice level only because in this situation, she’s Medic first and Rin second. “This damage should have been handled by a medic nin right away!”

“Ah.”

There's a brief pause. Then, a trickle of realization causes her to say, “You did it yourself, didn’t you?”

“Well…,” Kakashi trails off in the verbal equivalent of a shrug.

“Really,” interrupts Rin. Her tone icy with the collective aggravation of every medic nin who’s had to deal with ninja patients since the dawn of man. “That’s what you thought you should do _. Really_.”

Abruptly, she straightens, ignores Kakashi’s wandering explanation, and returns to the counter to look through the cupboards and drawers. She snags scissors, gauze, and tweezers. Before opening the packages, Rin pulls out a paper sterile field and unfolds it onto the counter. She drops everything on the field then washes her hands one more time, a quick wipe of medical chakra sterilizing her hands further.

“I’m going to repair the damage and hopefully reduce any scarring so you’re not, you know, defecating into a bag for the rest of your life. And I’ll removes the stitches, alright?” Rin says more than asks. “Lie back.”

“Alright,” says Kakashi amicably enough. He lays back, his single eye watching her work. “You look better.”

In the middle of threading chakra through Kakashi’s skin once more, Rin barely has enough attention to flick a baffled look at Kakashi.

“What?” Rin asks, encouraging the edges of the laceration to heal together just enough that it won’t pop open once she removes the stitches.

Kakashi hums, “You look like before.”

Rin grabs a couple of gauze pads, scissors, and tweezers and gets to work on cutting open the remaining stitches. She pulls the thread out gently with the tweezers, dropping them down on the gauze she laid on Kakashi’s leg. A deft throw has the bundle of bloody thread and gauze landing in the biohazard container by the sink.

“I don’t know what that’s supposed to mean,” Rin says. She calls up her chakra and begins reviving the damaged tissue and intestines beneath the laceration, working her way up to the skin.

“Ah, well, you…,” Kakashi trails off, sounding a bit like the words are a physical thing he’s pushing out his throat. “…outside the hospital you looked…and then when you came back you were different…you look like before now though, outside the hospital, I mean.”

Rin shoots Kakashi a look. The muscle layer is almost regenerated. She deadpans, “That clarified nothing.”

All the air rushes from Kakashi in a melancholic way. It reminds Rin of how parents sigh when they’re-not-mad-just-disappointed. Rin skillfully resists the urge to drown him in a mud puddle.

“You look okay,” says Kakashi after a moment. “You don’t have to fake it.”

Rin’s fingers twitch.

“…you’re okay, right?”

Rin focuses on stitching the skin together with her chakra until nothing of the wound remains but a pink scar. She unwinds her chakra from Kakashi. Pulls her hands back. Gathering up the used bandages, she deposits them into the trash before tidying up the rest of the space.

She wants to bite and snap and snarl in the way Kakashi would when they would get to personal for him. Where did he get off asking after her like that? He’d never cared before, only cares now because of the ghost stretched between them and it’s _her_ ghost not his. _She’s_ the one who knew him—

She doesn’t say any of this even as the words push at her teeth like bile.

Instead, Rin says, “It should be okay now, but I would take it easy for a couple days. Overstretching could possibly lead to reopening of the wound.”

Her hand twists on the faucet, the sound of running water smoothing out the sudden screaming hysteria running through her. She’s being unfair to Kakashi. She knows this. Yet, Kakashi’s question and words rub her wrong, like sandpaper on her insides.

Clinically, she begins washing her hands, the motions soothing and habitual.

Fabric rustles as Kakashi resettles his shirt, shifting on the bed to stand in silence. He doesn’t acknowledge her advice before the sound of his sandals on tile start to make their way to the door. Before he makes it out, silent as the specters he carries, Rin turns off the water and braces herself on the sink.

“I think I am. Okay, I mean,” Rin blurts. She’s facing the sink and not looking at Kakashi. “I…it’s always gonna hurt, right? But it’s getting better…”

Hadn’t she wanted to fix this? To change things?

A breath in and Rin braces herself to look at Kakashi, she turns, asking, “Are you?”

Kakashi looks at her. Really, looks at her, without his cracked shell, a husk in human form.

“I don’t know,” he says, brutally honest, the way one says the sky is blue. “It’s…good. That you are. Though.”

Rin _aches_. The overripe fruit in her chest bursting open with maggots, fat and wriggling in her rot splattered chest cavity. Maybe, he hadn’t cared before. Maybe, he only cares a little now. But he’s trying and genuine in his attempts.

She can’t be anything less than earnest in the face of that.

Rin reaches out, grasping the edge of Kakashi’s forearm sleeve, and tugs him out the door. They’re nearly to the front desk before her mind catches up with her.

“Rin?”

Ignoring him, Rin smiles brightly at the receptionist, “Yayaka! I’ll be needing a volunteer badge.”

Yayaka switches her gaze between the two then laughs, “That’ll be twice today you haven’t filled the proper paperwork out before hand, Rin.”

Rin’s cheeks bloom red. “Sorry, I’ll fill it out tonight, promise!”

“Hm, I suppose I’ll let it slide. Just give me a moment, okay?” replies Yayaka, digging into a drawer near her.

Kakashi shifts beside her and Rin shifts her grip to his wrist. The boy sighs but doesn’t jerk away, even though he most certainly could. It’s a bit too close to Obito’s habits of letting Rin drag him around for comfort but startlingly jarring by the fact Obito would never think to sigh at her.

Except maybe that one time in adoration—that. Had been. Embarrassing.

“Rin, what’re you doing?” Kakashi asks, shooting her a quizzical look that looks a bit more like a glare.

Rin tilts her head to meet his eye.

“You don’t have any missions today, right?”

Frankly, she’s bluffing majorly.

“…No?”

Score!

“Then, you can help me around the hospital today!” beams Rin.

Kakashi blinks at her. Slowly, flatly, he says, “I’m not a medic nin.”

“You’ll just be a volunteer,” she assures, waving a hand about. “Getting things, running messages, recording for me if my hands are busy, all that.”

Kakashi’s stare lasts far longer than necessary. He seems stuck between wanting to bolt immediately and holding together the armor of his forced attitude. Finally, he manages to slide into nonchalance, pushing his free hand into his pocket.

“Whatever.”

Yayaka sits up, holding out a plain badge with the word volunteer across the desk. Rin grabs it, letting go of Kakashi to scribble out his name with a sharpie from her scrubs breast pocket, then hands it over to him.

“Thank you again, Yayaka, you really are the best,” Rin gushes.

Yayaka waves her off. “Oh, it’s no trouble at all, you’re such a hard worker and all. It’s really nothing to do you a little favor now and then. Besides, I think it’s sweet that your boyfriend wants to help you at work.”

“Well, still, thank you. Tell Mit—” Rin’s brain stutters to a halt when she registers the rest of the woman’s words. A protest bubbles from her lips, as her hands come up as if to ward off Yayaka’s insinuation. Kakashi snorts quietly behind her in amusement. Bastard. “—Kakashi and I aren’t dating? He’s just a...”

A teammate Rin had considered dating. More than once. A teammate who had never given her the time of day and would never call her anything but useful tool at best due to her medical expertise. A teammate that Rin spent a large portion of her chasing the attention of.

A teammate she hasn’t thought of in weeks. Who let her grab and manhandle him even though he before would have sooner broken her wrist than let her do that. Who slouches and lazes and asks if Rin is okay.

“Just a friend,” Kakashi supplies neutrally.

Rin flicks a glance back at Kakashi. If she had been doubting trying to bridge the gap between them before, she wasn’t now. Fondness, deep and curling, settles in her lungs. Biting at the edges of guilt and grief. A feeling one could call happiness bubbles uncertainly in her throat, but nowhere does she feel the unfettered infatuation she’d nursed for so long.

Huh.

“A friend,” Rin repeats, voice even and sure.

 “Oh, really? Well, that’s too bad,” laments Yayaka. “Still, it’s sweet of him to help.”

“Not really by choice,” mutters Kakashi.

He doesn’t try to leave, though, pinning the badge to his chest neatly. Rin counts it as a win. It's the first thing she's ever won with him.

Sighing, like the whole words puts upon her, Rin bids Yayaka goodbye, “Tell Mitsuko I said hi, and tell your new kitty I love him.”

Yayaka laughs after her, “You haven’t even met him!”

“I still love him unconditionally!” Rin hollers over Kakashi’s loud ‘dogs are better.’ Then, at a more appropriate indoor volume. “Dogs and cats are equally deserving of infinite love, Kakashi.”

“Debatable,” retorts the grey-haired boy as she drags him off.

Once they’re around the corner, she drops his arm, allowing him to fall instep beside her. Kakashi folds his hands behind his head, eyeing her in his peripheral. Despite his new habits, Rin knows him enough to recognize when he wants to ask something but won’t. Sometimes, she wonders if he thinks that he's able suss out an answer by staring hard enough.

It certainly would explain some things.

“We’re heading to the lockers. There’s probably some spare scrubs,” explains Rin, in case that’s the question. She squints him over. Really the only difference between them is an inch of height Rin’s end, and the fact that every pound on Kakashi is muscle, otherwise they’re the same build. “You could probably fit into mine. If we have to.”

“As long as it’s not green,” allows Kakashi, gaze sliding away from her.

The two of them walk in silence neither companionable or uncomfortable. Simply a quiet between two people who each cared for the other on some level. Who no longer fit together as they used to but still trying anyway.

A bit bitterly, Rin wonders why the hell Kakashi couldn’t find this side of himself sooner. If Kakashi and Obito had—

Rin firmly stomps the question into the ground before it takes root. Going down that path would be an endless cycle of what-ifs that would drive her right back to where she started. She should be glad for Kakashi. He isn’t exactly spilling his guts across her shoes but he’s drawing close all the same.

It’s more than Rin or Obito ever hoped for before, at least.

Their arrival to the lockers is without fanfare. After rifling through the lockers, Rin finds, as suspected, there’s no scrubs small enough to fit Kakashi except her own. She pulls out her extra pair, a dusky pink, and holds them out expectantly.

Oddly or true to form—Rin doesn't know—Kakashi takes them without protest.

Rin puts her back to him as he changes.

“Can I keep the arm guards?”

“Um…they’re not really sterile, are they? If they were shorter maybe but they touch your hands.”

Kakashi grunts an acknowledgement and Rin hears the shifting of metal plates as Kakashi removes his sleeve guards.

“How do you carry weapons on you?”

“Ah, well, the sleeves are long, so you can hide a kunai up them, or senbon, or whatever. Where ever else you want to hide them is fine, they can’t be visible, though.”

Rin hears Kakashi pause.

“It can be a danger to the patient or yourself if they get violent and we don’t want to tempt anything. Of course, active duty shinobi who aren’t hospital staff are allowed full weaponry. That doesn’t include volunteers like you—ah, if you want I might have some extra leg holsters for under the pants?” Rin adds.

Another silence in which Kakashi might shake his head before, “No, it’s fine.”

He doesn’t sound fine.

Rin grins.

“Don’t worry about it! I’m a medic nin. I can knock a person unconscious over a hundred ways with my hands and chakra alone! Plus, I’m sure you know plenty of hand to hand to last a thousand lifetimes. You were top rookie and everything,” she says, nodding sagely.

An eyeroll that Rin sense right down to her marrow more than sees. Kakashi says, “Whatever, I’m ready.”

Rin spins around and claps her hands together, catching Kakashi as he affixes the nametag to his new clothing. He looks strangely at ease in her scrubs.

“Great!” she exclaims, pointing her hands at Kakashi. “First order of business is for you to grab your clipboard and finish up the paperwork before giving it to Yayaka to file. Then you can meet me on the third floor. My rotation is in the maternity ward, today, just wait at the front desk with Iro, I’ll pick you up as I come by.”

Rin sees Kakashi mouth ‘maternity ward,’ a curious set in his brow, as she gathers up Kakashi’s things and shoves them into her locker. Neatly. When she finishes, Kakashi is still staring at her with something that might on others be apprehension.

“C’mon, I got a busy day ahead of me, don’t make me wait too long,” she demands, shooing Kakashi out of the locker room.

Kakashi slouches out in mild reluctance.

Rin grins after his retreating form. There's a feeling of something snapping into place.

It won’t be easy, strung with tragic tripwire as they were, but Rin believes they'll make it work.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter is absolute MONSTER to write. hope y'all enjoy it. and if you think Rin is behaving irrationally...well...griefs a funny thing, y'know.


End file.
